The world needs less belief and viewpoint shaping and more free-thinking. Where this nonsense arises is when we put people into groups or they put themselves into groups. Be yourself.
For starters, no one is saying it's pg's job. The interviewer asked him if he felt there was anything he could be doing to get more women into YC.
Second, "encourage" does not mean "order someone to do something." No one is going to up women, putting their hands on their shoulders, shaking them, and telling them they must be developers! Instead, they're creating spaces that are welcoming and friendly to women. They aren't forcing them through the door; they're opening it for them and showing them all the delicious cookies inside.
> There are plenty of jobs that have many more women than men. Do you see massive outrage because the workforce is lacking in those jobs?
Yes. There are plenty of initiatives to get more men into nursing, fashion, and teaching. Just because you didn't take the three seconds to search for them doesn't mean they don't exist. You don't hear about them because, what a shocker, you aren't part of those communities. It's almost like you're on a website dedicated to tech culture or something!
For starters, no one is saying it's pg's job. The interviewer asked him if he felt there was anything he could be doing to get more women into YC.
Second, "encourage" does not mean "order someone to do something." No one is going to up women, putting their hands on their shoulders, shaking them, and telling them they must be developers! Instead, they're creating spaces that are welcoming and friendly to women. They aren't forcing them through the door; they're opening it for them and showing them all the delicious cookies inside.
Yes. There are plenty of initiatives to get more men into nursing, fashion, and teaching. Just because you didn't take the three seconds to search for them doesn't mean they don't exist. You don't hear about them because, what a shocker, you aren't part of those communities. It's almost like you're on a website dedicated to tech culture or something!
The question—as I read the articles surrounding this—was about the larger problem (of the continuing ultra-dominance of the tech industry by men) and what YC might be doing to improve the situation. (And the answer is…nothing?)
The bias here is the same thing that keeps female participation in OSS horribly low: the “meritocracy” involved is inherently biased toward young males because of the way that our society works as a whole. YC can't fix this, but there may be things that can and should be done to improve how it handles that existing bias.
So his statement is right—but the attitude is wrong and it is pure blame-shifting. Facts like this can be correct in the small, but wrong (not incorrect, but…ill-intentioned) in the large. The issue is about the larger problem, not the smaller problem. pg has been defending the smaller problem (the facts of the analysis) while ignoring the larger problem. At least in the articles I read this evening (I was on vacation last week when this apparently broken).
It's a systemic/societal problem, and YC certainly can't fix it on its own, and has limited ability to fix it in any case. They started doing something different with Watsi…maybe there's something they can do different for female founders (as pg himself has suggested that there's another essay coming, plus some announcements from YC in that direction in any case).
If there is a larger problem in society, that's not really PG's domain of expertise and we shouldn't expect it to be.
YC is in a position to help make a difference. It has disproportionately large mindshare in the tech industry. Maybe it's next non-profit needs to be something to address the gender imbalance in tech.
Personally, I don't know exactly what PG is doing to support women in technology right now. But from what I gather it's not nothing. He's probably doing more than any of us. Maybe you should get off your high horse and stop telling other people what they should be doing to solve the problem.
If that’s what you think I’m doing, then I have either failed to make myself clear or you have failed to comprehend what I’ve said. I’ll be charitable and assume the former.
1. There is no legal obligation for YC to change its selection criteria.
2. I am not looking to have YC change its selection criteria.
3. As long as YC has selection criteria that are inherently biased (as the YC selection criteria are[a]), the only thing that I’m saying is that they can’t pretend that the criteria aren't biased against women (and certain visible minorities).
I’m not on a high horse and telling YC to change things. I don’t expect them to be more “forgiving” of female founders not meeting their extant criteria. But it’s socially irresponsible to say that “I can't do anything about it, because the problem happened ten years ago.” I’m pointing out that while this is a thorny problem not of YC’s creation, there is an opportunity and perhaps a social responsibility that they have to encourage the people they fund to help fix this problem for the young women coming up five or ten years from now.
[a] As stated before: the bias behind the YC selection criteria is a fact, and it's admitted by PG himself in his response to this debacle. Selection criteria that expects someone to have ~10 years “hacking” experience prior to choosing YC is biased heavily in favour of people who already have accumulated advantages that permit them that exploration time (and are encouraged to do so in that particular direction) and against people who do not. This means that women are underrepresented because technical/engineering disciplines are not seen as “acceptable” for girls to do; certain visible minorities are underrepresented because, at least in America, race is strongly correlated to income and corresponding free time. These are facts.
It's not socially irresponsible for the them to answer why their aren't more women in YC today is because the problem happened ten years ago. That's just an answer to the question. It's likely a true and factual answer.
So there's a thorny program that they didn't cause. You don't expect them to change YC's selection process. But they have a social responsibility that's worth this much discussion?!? They have no more social responsibility than the rest of us. And they're already doing more than most of us.
The main thing that comes to mind is to do some marketing outreach to diverse pools of potential techie founders (Ada Initiative, PyLadies, etc).
Beyond activities like this, can pg or YC be held responsible for the preceding stages of the pipeline?
Sexism in tech is a very large problem, and like every other large problem, it's made up of many small problems. I think it's silly for pg to claim that there's nothing YC can do to get more women founders. No one's asking him to fix the whole thing — only to explore some ways that he could do his part to fix his small problem and get some more women founders through YC.
The problem is now that many many people are now reading as much as possible into everything that he saying. If he has an opinion, you don't know exactly what it is. But you'll analyze every word, every phrasing, and make up your own assumptions. That is all that is happening here.
I'll ask again: isn't it possible that he's right? There seems to be general consensus that girls do not get into computing science at a young age. So it makes sense there would be shortage of women with right ability at the right time for YC. There's nothing controversial about that. And short of inventing a time machine there isn't anything PG can do about that.
I know a lot of women in computing and almost none of them started as young as my male peers. These women code and some started their own companies. But they didn't do it in their late teens or early 20's because they hadn't even discovered it then.
You don't need to mold someone from adolescence in order for them to be a founder or a hacker. It's not something you have to grow up with.
PG is in the business of spending very small amounts of money on in the slim hope that a few of them will be wildly successful and return hundreds of times on that original investment in a relatively short time frame. He invests in people who move to the valley and live huddled together on peanuts and ramen. Those young people are a very small and specific subset of all people who can be founders or hackers.
But Otherwise I agree with you entirely.